Django

Synopsis

The movie that spawned a genre.

Django is a 1966 Italian spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Franco Nero in the eponymous role. The film earned a reputation as being one of the most violent films ever made up to that point and was subsequently refused a certificate in Britain until 1993, when it was eventually issued an 18 certificate. Subsequent to this the film was downgraded to a 15 certificate in 2004. Although the name is referenced in over thirty "sequels" from the time of the film's release until the mid 1980s in an effort to capitalize on the success of the original, none of these films were official, featuring neither Corbucci nor Nero. Nero did reprise his role as Django in 1987's Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (Django Strikes Again), in the only official sequel to be written by Corbucci.

A mildly sluggishly paced first half does almost nothing to dilute one of the all-time great movie heroes (complete with one of the all-time great movie hero theme songs).

What struck me this time around is how bifurcated Django the movie and Django the character are - in the first half, he's almost Batman-like, with his hat pulled over his eyes and dispassionately blowing people away with his pistol and then with (spoiler alert!) his machine gun. Then, he meets up with the Mexicans, his hat comes off, and all of a sudden he's a human being. It's a weird counterpoint to Eastwood's Man With No Name, and a dynamic I'd somehow not noticed before.

The sequence with Django taking back his gold is one of my favorite set-pieces ever, and a great example of the "cinema of process." And the whole movie takes place in a believably (but still entertainingly) scuzzy and evil world. Beautiful!

I don’t know if I can say anything coherent about Django, I’m too caught up staring into Franco Nero’s eyes (seriously, that man is soooo fine). The camera loves his eyes too, using them judiciously, withholding them until the most effective moments.

Django starts with an incredible image - the lone figure trudging across empty land, dragging a heavy coffin behind him, bringing death with him. That figure is an enigma, but the film gives just the right amount of information about him, at the right times.

The energy in the film is raw and explosive. There is a slow simmer that kept me intrigued. The villain is so bad, but not comically bad; rather, pure evil bad. A ballet…

Really hard to talk about anything but the brilliant visual metaphor of an outlaw dragging his own coffin behind him through the blood-soaked mud of the badlands. Simultaneously symbolic of the burden of mortality and the price of vengeance, encapsulating both the existentialism of the vanishing frontier and the desperate violence of personal ethical codes in a lawless, uncivilized land.

There's an incredible precision in the direction here that translates into tremendously evocative imagery (the famous profile shot of Django with his head low, his hat pulled down over his eyes, as he glances sidelong at the man entering the saloon, as if smelling the evil…

Coolness on a plate. While the first third of this influential masterwork drags as much as the coffin Django carries with him, the rest of the film is absolute, unadulterated western nirvana. You've got France Nero staring at people in a way that only he and Clint Eastwood can do, you've got a seriously bad-ass machine gun, you've got dynamite, you've got ear-slicing, you've got prostitute mud-wrestling; it's all here.

I was surprised at how influential this actually turned out to be, and I'm fully satisfied. You can see where Tarantino got some of his inspiration for Django Unchained, especially in terms of soundtrack and the appearance of General Jackson's men (bag-heads!)

The legend of Django is born. It's iconic from it's opening moments when you first see a man wearing a Union uniform, large brimmed black hat with his saddle on his shoulder and dragging a coffin behind him. That alone leaves an impression of iconic imagery, but before you even have time to wonder what this bastard has already gone through his theme song kicks in and you know you're watching history being made.

It's easy to see that people felt this way when they first saw Django as evidenced by the unofficial Django films that started popping up the SAME YEAR this came out and would continue to do so for the next 50 years or so, but as good as some of them are the real Django will always be the blue-eyed-badass Franco Nero.

While it lacks the finesse and is not as polished as Leone's work, Corbucci(the other Sergio) made one legendary movie with this one combining batman and Clint Eastwood to make Django, a man wearing a machine gun in a coffin, the dictionary example of a badass.

Tarantino was right about this film. The influence to his films from this one is clear. The pacing, the punch, the flow, etc.

I didn't expect the final scene to be that good. As you spectate django's struggle of how to carry the gun you really wanna know how the hell he's gonna get the job done. Then there's the father... The son... And the holy ghost.... pooom! WHAT THE FUCK?!